The Man They No Longer Knew

“Come on, Mr. Jarvis, Jesus. Go home,” One a them said with his arms out wide like a question, like-- give us a fucking break here!-smiling, trying to be friendly enough, hoping for the best. Some young mook who stood in the middle of the others, all of the five coatless in the rain, their tuxedos wet and tight against their bodies.

“You’re slime,” another man said, no friend this one, no smile. He came forward. He was the biggest of the five.

It was Timmy.

Mike knew Tim. He married my wife, Mike remembered.

Tim stuck his head down low and sideways, eyeball to eyeball. Then he whispered something meaningful into Mike’s ear that sounded like “ssshit sssshas shhhitsassas” .

A black umbrella came up the hill and stopped along the sidewalk beside Mike. Slowly the umbrella rose like a curtain to reveal two men underneath.

Dead silence.

It took a second- maybe less- for the umbrella to turn around and walk back down the sidewalk. The rain fell in stinging, steady, cold drops.

Mike’s gray hair lay flat against his forehead. He felt the rain running over his eyelashes. He, alone, wore a raincoat and he knew these mooks with their little white carnations were never going to change their minds.

He had ruined their day in ways that only someone close could ever do. Anyone else, you call the cops. You don’t stand out here in the cold rain. You don’t make sure.

Mike stepped to his left and began to walk around that way when he was shoved hard enough to fall one step, two steps, three steps backwards to land in the thin muddy grass beside the street. He heard the bottle break inside his overcoat pocket. His legs in brown wool pants were in the air showing high topped black sneakers with white socks.

Mike stood up again. He looked like the fight was out of him. He shook his head and waved his hands like enough was enough, okay, you win, and pretended to turn and follow the umbrella down the sidewalk, down the hill, back to wherever it was shitheads like him came from or go to when fresh out of a twenty year prison stretch. Back to stink up some other place, any place, but not this place-- when he suddenly changed direction and weaved to the right to find arms grabbing him again, and again Mike was thrown backwards to land hard on his butt on the sidewalk.

This time when he got back to his feet he had his overcoat off which he laced around through the air to land spread out magically on top the heads of all five converging men, his arms like pistons, striking out everywhere at everything and again he was caught and sent backwards, this time in a backwards somersault, and again he rose to his feet and again he advanced, his fists catching a chin, his elbows plunging into a stomach, then a throat, his feet kicking-connecting- a scream coming from him that sounded like an animal in pain and fear and far from ready to lay down and die.

"She's still my little girl!" he tried to say--

He only got out, "She's still--" when again he was pushed backwards. This time he didn’t fall down. He stood there for a moment breathing heavily when they came at him, five pissed off men, fed up, done playing. They had him down this time, the last time, and he was covering his head as heels and knees and fists burst upon his body and Mikey the Rat knew he was going to be very sore in the morning.

His daughter’s voice came then.

“Stop it!” he heard her say. “Stop it!”

And it stopped.

He took his arms away from his head and rolled over to look up.

They had made a hole and she came out of it, dressed in long white layers of silk, beautiful and young, the mascara on her face rolling down her cheeks, her eyes fearful and cold black and seeming not to believe what she was looking at.

“I wanted to… just watch from the back!” he said.

She shook her head. Slowly. Then quickly.

“You don’t even know me!” he said but she had already turned and he watched as they all went back in a hurried trot up the stone steps with tuxedo jackets now raised above his Jenny’s head and then the doors slowly closing and then the doors ever so absolutely closed, with the light inside a warm yellow through the stained glass windows as outside on the sidewalk the rain fell and fell and just kept on falling.

763 Words